Friday (46 page)

Of course none of these old dodderers are my guards, and neither are the youngsters. The cruise staff I got sorted out in the first forty-eight hours, whether they were musicians or whatever. I might have suspected that some of the younger officers had been assigned to watch me were it not that all of them stand duty watches, usually eight hours out of twenty-four, and therefore can’t take on another full-time job. But my nose does not play me false; I
know
why they follow me around. I don’t get this much attention dirtside but there is an acute shortage of beddable young females in this ship—thirty young male officers versus four young, single females in first class, other than Friday. With those odds a nubile female would have to have very bad breath indeed not to carry a train like a comet.

But, with all these categories accounted for, I found some men not accounted for. First class? Yes, they eat in the Ambrosia Room. Business travelers? Maybe—but according to the first assistant purser, business travelers go second class, not as swank but just as comfortable, at half the cost.

Item: When Jerry Madsen takes me to The Black Hole with his friends, here is this solitary bloke nursing a drink over in the corner. Next morning Jimmy Lopez takes me swimming; this same bloke is in the pool. In the card room I’m playing one-thumb with Tom—my shadow is playing solitaire over on the far side.

Once or twice can be coincidence…but at the end of three days I am certain that, anytime I am outside of suite BB, some one of four men is somewhere in sight. He usually stays as far from me as the geometry of the space permits—but he’s there.

Mr. Sikmaa did impress on me that I was to carry “the most valuable package any courier ever carried.” But I did not expect him to find it necessary to place guards around inside this ship. Did he think that someone could sneak up and steal it out of my bellybutton?

Or are the shadows not from Mr. Sikmaa? Was the secret broached before I left Earth? Mr. Sikmaa seemed professionally careful…but how about Mosby and his jealous secretary? I just don’t know—and I don’t know enough about politics in The Realm to make any guesses.

Later: Both of the young women are part of the watchful eye over me but they close in only when and where the men cannot—the beauty parlor, the dress shop, the women’s sauna, etc. They never bother me but I’m tired of it already. I’ll be glad to deliver the package so that I can fully enjoy this wonderful trip. Luckily the best part is after we leave The Realm. Outpost is such a frost (literally!) that no groundside excursions are planned there. Botany Bay is said to be very pleasant and I must see it because it is a place to which I may migrate later.

The Realm is described as rich and beautiful and I do want to see it as a tourist—but I won’t be moving there. While it is reputed to be quite well governed, it is as absolute a dictatorship as is the Chicago Imperium—I’ve had enough of that. But for a stronger reason I would not consider asking for an immigrant’s visa: I know too much. Officially I don’t know anything as Mr. Sikmaa never admitted it and I didn’t ask—but I won’t stretch my luck by asking to live there.

Midway is another place I want to see but don’t want to live. Two suns in its sky are enough to make it special…but it is the Pope-in-Exile that makes it very special—to visit, not to stay. It really is true that they celebrate Mass there
in public!
Captain van Kooten says so and Jerry tells me that he has seen it with his own eyes and that I can see it, too—no charge, but a contribution for charity on the part of a gentile is good manners.

I’m tempted to do it. It’s not
really
dangerous and I’ll probably never have a chance like this again in my whole life.

Of course I’ll check out Halcyon and Fiddler’s Green. Each must be extra-special or they would not command such high prices…but I’ll be looking for the joker in the deck every minute—such as that at Eden. I would hate to ask Gloria to pay a high fee to get me in…then discover that I hated the place.

Forest is supposed to be nothing much for a tourist—no amenities—but I want to give it a very careful look. It is the newest colony, of course, still in the log-cabin stage and totally dependent on Earth and/or The Realm for tools and instruments.

But isn’t that just the time to join a colony in order to feel great gusty joy in every minute?

Jerry just looks sour. He tells me to go look at it…and learn for myself that life in the forest primeval is greatly overrated.

I don’t know. Maybe I could make a deal for stopover privilege: pick up this ship or one of her sisters some months from now. Must ask the Captain.

Yesterday there was a holo at the Stardust Theater that I wanted to see, a musical comedy,
The Connecticut Yankee and Queen Guinevere
. It was supposed to be quite funny, with romantic-revival music, and loaded with beautiful horses and beautiful pageantry. I avoided my swains and went alone. Or almost alone; I could not avoid my guards.

This man—“number three” in my mind, although the passenger list said that he was “Howard J. Bullfinch, San Diego”—followed me in and settled down right behind me…unusual, since they normally stayed as far away from me as the size of a room permitted. Perhaps he thought he might lose track of me after they lowered the lights; I don’t know. His presence behind me distracted me. When the Queen sank her fangs into the Yankee and dragged him into her boudoir, instead of thinking about the fun going on in the holotank, I was trying to sort out and analyze all the odors that reached me—not easy in a crowded theater.

When the play was over and the lights came up, I reached the side aisle just as my shadow did; he gave way. I smiled and thanked him, then made exit by the forward door; he followed. That exit leads to a short staircase, four steps. I stumbled, fell backward, and he caught me.

“Thank you!” I said. “For that I am taking you to the Centaur Bar to buy you a drink.”

“Oh, not at all!”

“Oh, most emphatically. You are going to explain to me why you have been following me and who hired you and several other things.”

He hesitated. “You have made some mistake.”

“Not me, Mac. Would you rather come quietly…or would you rather explain it to the Captain?”

He gave a little quizzical smile. (Or was it cynical?) “Your words are most persuasive even though you are mistaken. But I insist on paying for the drinks.”

“All right. You owe me that. And then some.”

I picked a table in the corner where we could not be overheard by other customers…thereby ensuring that we could be overheard by an Ear. But, aboard ship, how can one avoid an Ear? You can’t.

We were served, then I said to him almost silently, “Can you read lips?”

“Not very well,” he admitted at the same low level.

“Very well, let’s keep it as low as possible and hope that random noise will confuse the Ear. Mac, tell me one thing: Have you raped any other helpless females lately?”

He flinched. I don’t think anyone can be hit that hard and not flinch. But he paid me the courtesy of respecting my brain and showed that he was a brain, too, by answering, “Miss Friday, how did you recognize me?”

“Odor,” I answered. “Odor at first; you sat too close to me. Then, as we left the theater, I forced on you a voice check. And I stumbled on the stairs and forced you to put your arms around me. That did it. Is there an Ear on us here?”

“Probably. But it may not be recording and it is possible that no one is monitoring it now.”

“Too much.” I worried it. Walk side by side on the promenade? An Ear would have trouble with that setup without continuous tracking, but tracking could be automatic if Mac had a beacon on him. Or I myself might be booby-trapped. Aquarius Pool? Acoustics in a swimming pool are always bad, which was good. But, damn it, I needed more privacy. “Leave your drink and come with me.”

I took him to cabin BB. Shizuko let us in. So far as I could tell she stood a twenty-four-hour watch except that she slept when I did. Or I thought she did. I asked her, “What do we have later, Shizuko?”

“Purser’s party, Missy. Nineteen o’clock.”

“I see. Go take a walk or something. Come back in one hour.”

“Too late. Thirty minutes.”

“One hour!”

She answered humbly, “Yes, Missy”—but not before I caught her glance at him and his scant five-millimeter nod.

With Shizuko gone and the door bolted I said quietly, “Are you her boss or is she yours?”

“Some argument,” he admitted. “Maybe ‘cooperating independent agents’ describes it.”

“I see. She’s quite professional. Mac, do you know where the Ears are in here or will we have to work out some way to defeat them? Are you willing to have your sordid past discussed and recorded on tape somewhere? I can’t think of anything that would embarrass me—after all, I was the innocent victim—but I want you to speak freely.”

Instead of answering he pointed: over my couch on the lounge side, over the head of my bed, into my bathroom—then he touched his eye and pointed to a spot where the bulkhead met the overhead opposite the couch.

I nodded. Then I dragged two chairs off into the corner farthest from the couch and out of line of sight for the Eye location he had indicated. I switched on the terminal, punched it for music, selected a tape featuring the Salt Lake City Choir. Perhaps an Ear could reach through and sort out our voices but I did not think so.

We sat down and I continued, “Mac, can you think of any good reason why I should not kill you right now?”

“Just like that? Without even a hearing?”

“Why do we need a hearing? You raped me. You know it, I know it. But I
am
giving you this much of a hearing. Can you think of any reason why you should not be summarily executed for your crime?”

“Well, since you put it that way—No, I can’t.”

Men will be the death of me. “Mac, you are a most exasperating man. Can’t you see that I don’t want to kill you and am looking for a reasonable excuse not to do so? But I can’t manage it without your help. How did you get mixed up in so dirty a business as a gang rape of a blindfolded, helpless woman?”

I sat and let him stew and that’s just what he did. At last he said, “I could claim that I was so deep into it by then that, if I balked at raping you, I would have been killed myself, right then.”

“Is that true?” I asked, feeling contempt for him.

“True enough, but not relevant. Miss Friday, I did it because I
wanted
to. Because you are so sexy you could corrupt a Stylite. Or cause Venus to switch to Lesbos. I tried to tell myself that I couldn’t avoid it. But I knew better. All right, do you want my help in making it look like suicide?”

“Not necessary.” (So sexy I could corrupt a Stylite. What in the world is a Stylite?—must find out. He seemed to mean it as a superlative.)

He persisted. “Aboard ship you can’t run away. A dead body can be embarrassing.”

“Oh, I think not. You were hired to watch over me; do you think anything would be done to
me?
But you already know that I intend to let you get away with it. However, I want explanations before I let you go. How did you escape the fire? When I smelled you, I was astonished; I had assumed that you were dead.”

“I wasn’t at the fire; I ran for it before that.”

“Really? Why?”

“Two reasons. I planned to leave as soon as I learned what I had come for. But mostly on your account.”

“Mac, don’t expect me to believe too many unlikely things. What was this you had come there to learn?”

“I never found out. I was after the same thing they were after: why you had gone to Ell-Five. I heard them interrogate you and I could see that you did not know. So I left. Fast.”

“That’s true. I was a carrier pigeon…and when does a carrier pigeon know what a war is about? They wasted their time, torturing me.”

Swelp me, he looked shocked. “They
tortured
you?”

I said sharply, “Are you trying to play innocent?”

“Eh? No, no, I’m guilty as sin and I know it. Of rape. But I didn’t have any notion that they had
tortured
you. That’s stupid, that’s centuries out of date. What I heard was straight interrogation, then they shot you with babble juice—and you told the same story. So I knew you were telling the truth and I got out of there. Fast.”

“The more you tell me, the more questions you raise. Who were you working for, why were you doing it, why did you leave, why did they let you leave, who was that voice that gave you orders—the one called the Major—why was everybody so anxious to know what I was carrying—so anxious that they would mount a military attack and waste a lot of lives and wind up torturing me and sawing off my right tit?
Why?
”

“They did
that
to you?” (Swelp me, Mac’s face was utterly impassive until I mentioned damage done to my starboard milk gland. Will somebody explain males to me? With diagrams and short words?)

“Oh. Complete regeneration, functional as well as cosmetic. I’ll show you—later. If you answer my questions fully. You can check it against how it used to look. Now back to business. Talk.”

Mac claimed to have been a double agent. He said that, at the time, he was an intelligence officer in a quasi-military hired out to Muriel Shipstone Laboratories. As such, and working alone, he had penetrated the Major’s organization—

“Wait a minute!” I demanded. “Did he die in the fire? The one called the Major?”

“I’m fairly sure he did. Although Mosby may be the only one who knows.”

“Mosby? Franklin Mosby? Finders, Incorporated?”

“I hope he doesn’t have brothers; one is too many. Yes. But Finders, Inc. is just a front; he’s a stooge for Shipstone Unlimited.”

“But you said you were working for Shipstone, too—the laboratories.”

Mac looked surprised. “But the whole Red Thursday ruckus was an intramural fight amongst the top boys; everybody knows that.”

I sighed. “I seem to have led a protected life. All right, you were working for Shipstone, one piece of it, and as a double agent you were working for Shipstone, another piece of it. But why was
I
the bone being fought over?”

“Miss Friday, I don’t know; that is what I was supposed to find out. But you were believed to be an agent of Kettle Belly Bal—”